Friday, July 8, 2011

Coffee and yoga

The two things that will undoubtedly make me feel happy regardless of what state I was in before are yoga and coffee. And listening to Frank Sinatra, but Frank's voice got me through high school, so these days when I listen, I feel happy but also think that maybe I should move on, as I kept thinking all four years between 1996 and 2000.

For most yoga teachers that I have had that strive to apply yoga to their daily lives, coffee is bad for your health and should be stopped. I respect these teachers, and perhaps one day I will be ready to test their theory, but I strongly believe at this time health is simply moderation. There is nothing that is purely evil or good in this world and mixing the two achieves a ballance.

One of my yoga influences, Mark Twain, suggested that even moderation should be taken in moderation. This means forgiving ourselves for eating an entire box of cookies if such a rare incident is to occur, and enjoying it, because what's the point of eating a box of cookies if not to enjoy? This means throwing yourself fully into yoga, try practicing every day for 30 days, then twice a day if you have the opportunity... But recognize when you've become obsessed. Take a break for a day, or two, or even three. But then get off your lazy butt and jump back into the regular yoga practice you found sustainable.

We are constantly drifting between circumstances in which we have a pattern and a sense of control over our lives, or in which our paths are irregular and not of our choosing or of our choosing by pure coincidence. Strive to be consistent when the world around you is haphazard but also to let in spontaneity when the grind of the day to day is numbing your senses.

How? In the summer of '95 before I discovered Frank, I was a miserable and maladjusted adolecent. With a group of girls from summer camp, I took to writing a "happiness list". Every day we would add an item or several to our own lists. Sometimes they were names of people at camp(though that was never consistent and I found the very person that made me happy one day made me miserable the next), sometimes descriptions of occurences. All in all, the happiness list, which counted about six-hundred items at the end of the summer, was a good idea, but I would get lost in fantasies of places I had never seen and people I was unlikely to meet, (#42, Johnny Depp). Today, I propose the idea of the happiness list to be aware of the present and remind ourselves what we appreciate in our lives.

Here's a very abreviated and spur of the moment list of what wakes me up, reminds me what I love about what I have:

Yoga (sometimes only after I've finished)
One cup of rich coffee
Frank Sinatra, "Fly Me to the Moon"
Fresh basil
Lying on the ground and gazing at the night sky
Jumping in freezing cold water (and climbing out again immediately)
Living with an artist
The constant existance of the moon (this might be a bit obtuse, so I'll blog about it next time)

How would you start your list?

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